It's a rich life if you're not in court . . .

Over in the US of A, the 2014 PGA Tour season had barely finished before it started up again. On the European circuit, meanwhile, the campaign for the rank and file finished last weekend but the real finish for the top brass will start this week. Everybody will then finish for a wee bit before they start the 2015 schedule with 2014 yet to finish. And if you started reading those sentences and didn't finish them, then I wouldn't blame you at all. You just about have to be a Mastermind champion to get your shattered head round the overlapping dates in the diaries these days.

This week, the European Tour's big finish gets under way in the Far East as the money-laden Final Series, a four-event, $30m bonanza, swings into action at the $7m BMW Masters in Shanghai. The following week, there will be another great haul of China on offer in the $8.5m WGC HSBC Champions event before the month-long gravy train rumbles into Turkey for the Turkish Airlines Open and then makes its final stop in Dubai for the DP World Tour Championship.

There are a couple of first class passengers who won't be hopping on board for the journey, of course. Tiger Woods, the 14-time major champion, ripped up his ticket earlier in the season after his gammy back played up again and he hirpled off into a prolonged recovery process.

If that was a damaging blow to both the European Tour and the increasingly golf-daft Chinese, then Rory McIlroy's decision to sit out the first two events of this lucrative quartet of tournaments was another real kick in the People's Republics. McIlroy, and Woods, are the superstars and the star attractions in this engrossed part of the world and, as the Chinese golf boom continues, the absence of these box office hits in the country's two biggest events of the year is a sizeable dunt.

McIlroy has his own concerns, mind you. The world No 1, who leads the tour's Race to Dubai rankings by more than €3m, has opted for a break to prepare for his forthcoming legal battle with his former management company. The fact that McIlroy, whose double-whammy of major wins this season emphatically re-established him as the undisputed powerhouse of the global game, is already eyeing his day in a Dublin court has some anxious observers fearing that it may hinder his preparations for the Masters, where he will be going for the career grand slam. It's not all fun and games in this multi-millionaire playground.

McIlroy and Woods may be missing in action this week but there are still some big-hitters pitching up in Shanghai. A posse of Europe's winning Ryder Cup team have made the trek east in a magnificent seven that includes Jamie Donaldson, Thomas Bjorn, Victor Dubuisson, Stephen Gallacher, Graeme McDowell, Justin Rose and Ian Poulter.

For Poulter, this Shanghai shoot-out is an opportunity for him to let his clubs do the talking after his well-publicised online twitterings that eventually led to Ted Bishop, the president of the PGA of America, being sacked.

Poulter's 2014 campaign has been far from stellar but Asia is one of his happy hunting grounds. He won his last European Tour event in China two years ago and, prior to that, he had tasted success in Hong Kong and Singapore.

While the tour's main movers and shakers chase the big bucks and bolster the Christmas shopping war chest over the next month, those who dropped off the main circuit will have to gird their loins and prepare themselves for the rigours of the qualifying school. Only eight of the 27 graduates from last year's q-school final retained their playing rights for 2015.

Carlos Del Moral won that particular event last November and earned 29 starts in 2014, yet still failed to keep his card. Alastair Forsyth, the last of the qualifiers, had a decent 24-event schedule but finished a lowly 160th on the money list. In this game of opportunity, it's all about taking them when they come along.